Since the dawn of modern recreational drugs, policy across the western world has been fairly similar; total prohibition, and punishments of varying severity for possession and distribution depending on the classification of the substance.  As a quick glance at crime figures for any reasonably sized European or American city will tell you, this has been a catastrophic failure. Despite billions of dollars in investment in anti-drugs policing, and thousands of anti-drug campaigns in schoold across the western world, the use of recreational drugs by the rock stars and rebels of the sixties and seventies has mushroomed into a vicious plague; available at prices affordable to young, deprived people in cities, towns and even villages, drugs such as herion, crack cocaine and crystal meth have devastated lives, killed countless thousands and devastated communities.

Not only this, but mass drug use has created a secondary crime wave, as addicts desparate for their next hit, turn to crime in order to purchase more drugs.  This crime is usually committed by male addicts, as young, female addicts turn to prostitution, often on street corners, for extremely low prices, putting themselves at risk of rape and even murder.   The minds and bodies of the vicitms of this plague are stripped of their vitality and health, as the addiction takes its course, the chances of redemption are steadily diminished, their ability to seek a job, or have a normal family, even after extensive rehabilitation, becomes massively reduced.

All the time, new addicts are recruited by dealers, who are astute enough to realise that their current clients will not last forever.  Young people, often intelligent, with great potential, see their bright futures extinguished as experimentation turns to dependency.  The fact that drugs are illegal has almost ceased to matter, drug empires are wealthy and expansive, intelligence available to the police is sketchy, and anti-drug measures are rarely preventative.

How then, do we deal with this crisis, for it is a crisis, of epic proportions.   It is obvious prevention has not worked. The answer must then be legalisation. I propose going one step further than this; the government must become the nation’s drug dealer.  If drugs were provided, on prescription, for free, to addicts, not only would the need to theive in order to fund one;s addiction disappear, but the amount of drugs consumed by each addict could be monitored, and rehabilitation could be provided. Drug dealers would be bankrupted, organised crime would loose its primary means of sutainance. Prostitution would be massively diminished. With the dealers out of the way, no more young people would be sucked into a life of drugs. The gamour associated with drug use would disappear, as it would be completely legal, and carried out in drab drop in centres.

The effect this would have on our most vulnerable communities would be immense, crime would be reduced by huge proportions and no more bright young people would be lost to this wasting disease.   It may be radical, but so was Roosevelt’s decision to repeal prohibition, and look what that did to the mafia.